On 04/05/2010, at 12:55 AM, Terence Love wrote:
> Typical design problems at this scale are designing interventions for Iraq
> and Afghanistan, designing new national health systems, developing good
> addiction management interventions at a large scale social level, developing
> interventions to provide better alternatives than corruption, developing
> interventions to reduce social and individual developmental problems caused
> by media, developing improved forms of education.
The dangers of hubris seem ever present on such a large scale. However, even if we were in a position to describe the current state of affairs in any one of these areas with sufficient detail and depth—what in our design method is called scoping and benchmarking—there is a necessary prior question.
When you talk about 'Typical design problems' I find myself asking how it is that these things are 'problems', let alone 'design problems'. It is by no means a given that these are definable as problems, or indeed that they are the 'real' problems. In our own little domain of information design, with much fewer opportunities for us to become masters of the universe, there are often significant doubts that we are tackling the 'real problem'.
I expressed some of my doubts about this in a blog at: http://blog.communication.org.au/?p=17
Following on from that blog, I would ask of this grander scale you posit: Will the 'Typical design problems' you propose to solve end with solutions that are prostheses or panaceas?
But my fundamental question to you is what is the nature of a 'problem'? Any design theory must have something to say about that.
Greetings from a wonderfully wet Melbourne.
David
--
blog: www.communication.org.au/dsblog
web: http://www.communication.org.au
|